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CANNES, France–It's 50 years later for the French New Wave, the provocative movement that changed all cinema, but time has stood still for style icon Anna Karina.

Still fair of face and figure at 68, the Danish-born actress, model and singer was at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday for the premiere of the remastered version of Pierrot le fou, one of many films she made with Jean-Luc Godard.

Gazing out at the bright blue waters of the Riviera as she sat for an interview on Majestic Beach, dressed in chic black with her trademark red flourishes, Karina marvelled at how her films and others from the New Wave made a half century ago seem just as fresh today.

"I go to many, many festivals all over the world, and young people –really young people, ages 15 to 25 –tell me they really love these films," she said, the tops of her eyes twinkling above her sunglasses.

"It's so happy all the time. You become sentimental, of course, because you could be their grandmother. But it's not old-fashioned to them, and that's what I like about them."

A contemporary of Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau and other European beauties, Karina had the added mystique of being the muse (and later the wife) of Godard, one of the New Wave's busiest and most vocal practitioners.

In 1959, Godard spotted her in a sexy ad for soap suds and wanted to cast her for a nude scene he had planned for Breathless, the rule-breaking drama that would make stars of the director and Jean-Paul Belmondo, his leading man.

Karina was not yet 19 at the time, and she turned Godard down.

Her attitude now is like the Edith Piaf song, "Non, je ne regrette rien"("No, I regret nothing"): "If I had said `yes' to that part, maybe I wouldn't have done all the rest. Although I didn't think about that at the time. I don't know if I was smart or not."

Karina swooned for Godard despite his boldness, marrying him in 1960 and going on to star in some of his greatest films. They included Une femme est une femme, Vivre sa vie, Le petit soldat, Band of Outsiders, A Married Woman, Alphaville, and of course, Pierrot le fou, which finally teamed her with Belmondo.

The two play Bonnie-and-Clyde troublemakers on the run and in love, a pair Godard called "the last romantic couple." Cinematographer Raoul Coutard's bright colours, influenced by modern art, have been brilliantly restored.

Was Godard a tougher taskmaster as director or husband? Karina smiled at the query.

"That's a good question," she said.

"He was 10 years older than me, and he was never there, you know? He was always going away. Sometimes he'd say, I'm going to buy some cigarettes and he'd come back three weeks later ...

"It could be a little bit sad as a young girl to sit there and wait in front of the telephone that would never ring. But when we were shooting a picture, of course, we would see each other. It was like big family since he would often use the same crew."

Karina and Godard divorced in 1967. She would remarry three more times.

Back then, going to Cannes also seemed like a family gathering.

"It used to be more intimate. Everybody would stop and talk at the Carlton Hotel; Hitchcock would pass by and say hello. There were not that many people here.

"It's changed a lot, I must say, since I was a young girl. It's like a big thing with bling-bling now. Now there are so many people here, people don't really have time to talk to each other."

But Karina is heartened that people still seems as fou – crazy – about film as ever. And she's grateful to be one of the last surviving stars of the New Wave, while other sadly fade away: Godard, 78, is a recluse living in Switzerland; Belmondo, 76, is ill and unable to travel.

Karina is still very active and able to go to festivals worldwide to continue the dialogue about film that the New Wave inspired.

"We knew we were doing something special that we really liked. But we didn't know that 50 years later it would be still be there and people would still be going to the films."

The New Wave continues to attract new recruits. Every helmer straight out of film school wants to tip his or her hat to the filmmakers.

"It's the way of thinking that attracts them," Karina said.

"It's the way they want to live. It makes me very, very happy. There's something very meaningful about this."

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